As the days blur together in Quarantine, a sign of the new console wars approaching pop up as pre-order notifications for the Xbox Series X are now live.
Numerous retailers such as GameStop and Best Buy are now allowing customers to sign up for when Series X pre-orders go live. This could be more important than when the PS4/One era was on the horizon due to a fear of shortages.
As COVID-19 has the streets looking more like I Am Legend, there is a concern among console manufactures being able to produce enough products. Especially with recent reports of Switch consoles being out of stock partially due to reselling bots buying them up.
Some notable points so far about the Xbox Series X is its backwards compatibility on Xbox One games along with the use of the controllers. Besides toting the 1TB memory and 12 teraflops of GPU power, SSD storage will be required for games. Best Buy, Target, Walmart and GameStop pre-order notification sign-ups for the notifications here.
Pockets Half Empty or Half Full
The cost of upcoming consoles typically is locked in around this time, but as the situation changes outside, so has this rollout process. Sony and Microsoft could be selling their consoles at a loss as unemployment in countries like the U.S rises.
They have to consider what’s the price point consumers are willing to make the jump. Besides the cost of parts, another limiting sales factor is how much inventory they can output.
Katan Games analyst Serkan Toto commented that “Both consoles will be a lot more similar to each other in terms of specs, pricing, and features when compared to the last generation,” Toto said. “Microsoft will likely avoid shenanigans like higher price (I expect $499 price tags for both), weaker specs, restrictions to used disc sales, etc.
Macquarie Capital analyst Damian Thong has another view regarding the cost of the consoles,
“I think both the PS5 and Xbox Series X may end up at US$450 even though they would lose money at that price.”
E3 is canceled, so Microsoft plans to hold its own digital Xbox event, which is typically around when pre-orders go live. Both next-gen consoles are slated to hit the 2020 holiday season, we’ll keep you up to date as new info arrives.
What do you think about the Xbox Series X and PS5? What games are you playing at the moment? Leave a comment!
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